McCollough/McNeir

[davidlpope]

Thank you! I definitely appreciate the info, and I'm also very open to more help from anyone who can offer more. It is a lot of bulk and I'm not sure if I know how to approach it or how to determine a singular path. I know that if I trace my own surname (Lunger) up through the paternal line It points to Germany/Austria. If that's all there is to it then I suppose my work is done, as there is no connection via paternal surname. But if the maternal connections bear any relevance then perhaps there is a connection yet to be discovered. I think at this point I'm just trying to determine if there is a Scottish connection at all. I would be curious about Highland/Lowland and other details, but not before a Scottish connection was established. I'm new to this as you most certainly have realized! Thanks again

My best advice is to trace your ancestry back until you come to the nearest Scottish surname that has a readily available tartan and an active clan association.

There's not much distinction made here in the US over Highland vs. Lowland vs. Borders families.

It's always a bonus if your selected "clan" has an active chief who serves as a rallying point for the family's heritage and history.

What are the surnames of your four grandparents?
Your great-grandparents?

[alunger]

My best advice is to trace your ancestry back until you come to the nearest Scottish surname that has a readily available tartan and an active clan association.

There's not much distinction made here in the US over Highland vs. Lowland vs. Borders families.

It's always a bonus if your selected "clan" has an active chief who serves as a rallying point for the family's heritage and history.

What are the surnames of your four grandparents?
Your great-grandparents?

@davidlpope - thanks for the advice! Coincidentally for you and I, my grandmother's maiden name is Pope (her grandfather was Poparachney in the Ukraine) It is in her line that the McCollough name appears and I believe this is the earliest potential connection on my tree. Edwin C. McCollough is my 3rd great grandfather. It seems distant but it is interesting that my great grandmother knew him and I knew my great grandmother!

The McNeir connection comes via Edwin McCollough's wife. Her mother was Charlotte McNeir. Of course both of these names end up being married out by the time I come around, but as I'm looking at it, I have McCollough and McNeir heritage funneling down through my 3rd great grandmother who was daughter of one and married to the other.

I don't know if that helps clarify much but at the time it is all the detail I have. And maybe it's a stretch but it seemed worth investigating!

[Digger1]

For every question that you think you have answered when doing genealogical research, two more questions will arise. It's sort of like courtship....the chase is often more satisfying than the capture! :-)

There will come a point when you might want to pursue two avenues of research to try to gain actual documentation. I would recommend that you take a look at:

New England Historical Genealogical Society (www.americanancestors.org) since many of our Scots ancestors entered the U.S. through the original Massachusetts Bay Colonies, such records as might exist of their earliest days in the New World may well be located there.

To do research in Scotland, try their Scottish National Archives at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk

Be prepared for some "interesting" twists and turns....in one of my own lines I found that a Captain Thomas Erskine Askey had led a company of militia in the state of Massachusetts during the American Revolution. He had arrived in New England as a young chap under a contract of Indentured Servitude. Turns out that this chap was actually born in Ireland under the name of Thomas Erskine. His nativity in Ireland was due to his father having been spirited away to the Emerald Isle by his grandfather to escape the wrath of the English crown following the "rising of 1715'" that the grandfather had played a rather significant role in from his own origins in Renfrewshire. It took several years to piece all of that together....but the two sources above were invaluable in the doing of it. It's out there somewhere, just waiting to be found....

Good hunting!
David